OLPC India Foundation (OIF)

OLPC India was founded by Satish Jha, a journalist, corporate executive and a social entrepreneur who launched Jansatta for Indian Express Group and edited newsweekly Dinamaan for The Times of India Group. He also co-founded Tarahaat.com, DESI Power, Digital Partners India, PUCL Bulletin, eHealthcare Foundation among others and seeded a couple dozen ventures where technology could help the poor leapfrog to the modern times. When the Government of India rejected the idea of OLPC, he decided to take it up with the state governments instead and help lay the foundation of new education, changing it the way cell phones made possible what plain old telephones could not achieve in communication.

OLPC made a start in India with a pilot deployment in a rural village at Khairat near Navi Mumbai where laptops have been deployed and every child carries one laptop home.

April 2008 : The journey was tremendous in terms of learning and working on Khairat. And the project expanded to several other schools as well. Parikrma in Bangalore, Katha in New Delhi and some smaller ones in UP and other parts of Maharashtra have shown very promising results.

OLPC is reaching out to the governments, NGOs, corporations, international bodies and anyone who has significant interest to contribute to this movement.

By early 2010 seven state governments took a decision to go ahead with the deployment of OLPC. Kerala was the first state to order OLPC and Manipur followed suite. In 2010 its pilots also expanded to the states of Rajasthan and Uttarakhand.

Katha has been mandated to take its model to several million children in Delhi and they are excited about XO changing the world of children of Delhi's slums around Govindpuri. The work done at one of the school named Katha Khazana setup by Katha in New Delhi can be found here OLPC India/Katha_Chronicle.

So far, the following state governments have been supportive of OLPC:

Kerala: Ordered OLPC laptops for 150,000 children. Proposal given to the Govt on Mar 18th, 2009. Order issued for a sole source, proprietary item purchase on March 19, 2009, a cabinet decision.
Manipur: Ordered for 70,000 students, following the Kerala model, on March 26, 2009.
Uttar Pradesh: Ordered for all Kasturba Gandhi Vidyalay, a residential school for girl students in rural areas. Sept 2009
Himachal Pradesh: Ordered for 4334 schools, about 250,000 children in June 2010

While Manipur, eligible for 90% aid from the Govt of India started out with 1000 children, other states expected 80% mandatory support from the Union Govt.

The Union School Education Secretary suggested that the state Governments did not need the Govt of India nod for Uttar Pradesh, as the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan Board had approved it. However, Uttar Pradesh continued to expect the approval from the Union Government.

MHRD Minister Kapil Sibal offered the States of Kerala and Himachal only 20% support. They asked for 60%. He offered 40%. The matter rested there.

Manipur

The Government of Manipur has been a long standing champion of OLPC. They were quick to realize its potential at a presentation in March 2009 and approved the procurement within a week. That was a record speed for a Government to order 75000 OLPCs. Manipur has already deployed the first pilot of 1000 OLPC XOs. As OLPC India Foundation is a not for profit Trust in India, it did not have all the business resources and employees who understood the procurement process like a corporation and it took several months to conclude the order. The Chief Minister Ibobi Singh, Union Minister Agatha Sangma, the Education Minister Jayantha have made public commitments to run with OLPC as the State's Education Strategy.

Kerala

The government of Kerala has been the most enthusiastic supporter of OLPC. The Government placed an order on OLPC within a day of the presentation. However, the concurrent status of primary education means that whatever the state government may do, it requires consultations with the Central Government. The Indian Education Ministry however kept delaying the process despite repeated requests by the Govt of Kerala. Now Kerala may decided to go on its own.

Uttar Pradesh

The Government of Uttar Pradesh, a northern state in India announced in the Indian Express in September 2009 that they were going ahead with OLPC under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, often referred to as SSA and meaning "Universal Education Movement" and the Board of SSA in the State cleared it and requested the Central Board to allow it to go ahead with the plan. Understandably, the Central Government's SSA Board authorized the Government of Uttar Pradesh to go ahead with their plan. It is understood that the UP Government would prefer to be freed from the constraints that SSA imposes on the state's education expenditure.

Himachal Pradesh

Himachal Pradesh Principal Secretary of Education announced in March 2010 through a news item by Press Trust of India that they were seriously considering OLPC as the innovative vehicle for education in the state. Himachal Pradesh ordered OLPC for 4000 schools but the file has been stuck with MHRD that has been promoting a $10 computer.

Bihar

The Times of India announced in early April that the Principal Secretary of Education was seriously considering OLPC as the state's education strategy. Soon after Intel approached the government offering a discounted price. However, Intel's Classmate does not meet the needs of the State the way OLPC does. One more effort by Intel to attack OLPC in a state where it created huge amount of goodwill on its own.

OLPC India Student Chapter

OLPC India Student Chapter was an organization whose primary aim was to spread awareness about OLPC in India and unite the students of various universities, colleges and schools. The organization was formed on 5th February 2008 at a seminar in Punjab University, Chandigarh.

OLPC Pune

A meeting of volunteers who are interested in DBF OLPC project took place on 14th Feb in Pune city of Maharashtra.It has been decided to start a DBF OLPC volunteers group in Pune.Initial discussions are going on.

Languages needed for localization

Which language or languages are needed for localization for use by children in India please?

INDIA has 28 states and 24 official languages. The language with the largest number of speakers is Hindi however it is not a majority language. Because of the large number of languages, English has become the lingua franca in business and government. However, this is neither British nor American English but a distinct Indian dialect with its own unique vocabulary and style.

According to Ethnologue, 180,000,000 people in India speak Hindi. It is the official language of Arunachal Pradesh, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Bihar, Chandigarh, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Uttaranchal.

The other important languages and their respective states and population numbers are as below:

These are only estimates of numbers of speakers, of course, and refer to first languages, roughly the language spoken in the home. Sanskrit is spoken as the first language only in a few Brahmin families(and few villages where everyone speaks the language irrespective of caste). Some of the numbers are from 1997.

Projects

BoomingBang

'Introduction- BoomingBang is a third person RPG arcade game* whose idea was taken from Wormux. Similarly like Wormux, BoomingBang emphasizes on Performance over style, using SDL library and XML as well as a great deal of C programming :)

This project is monitored by Abhishek Indoria who is currently active in working with Phoenix-Team which is a 29 members' team. Please visit [ http://phoenix-team.tk Phoenix-Team official Website ] for more information.

The basic mission of players is to eliminate all other players from the game in a funny way.

You control a team of creatures, be it a penguin or Pigeon or a bull. You try various methods, like dropping them into water by pushing them towards water from a hill, or hitting them with bat and send them flying, to give them a vomiting injection and you'll see them vomiting(Be careful, stand around the vomited surface too long and you will find yourself in grave),booming them with a funny bazooka or removing surface under them so if the move, BINGO!

Introduction-This project is founded by SCOMST (School of Computer Science and Technology) which is part of a not-for-profit organization in a small town called Yavatmal in Maharashtra State, India. The project is currently in the Architecture/Design phase. Manusheel Gupta and Lauren Klein from OLPC are supporting this project.

Project description- Jupiter is called "Brhaspati" (बृहस्पति) in the Sanskrit language and refers to the "Guru" (preceptor) of the Gods. The ultimate aim of Jupiter is to make self-study software for OLPC so intelligent and powerful that, just by knowing age and/or grade level and language of a student, it should be able to teach the student appropriate subjects and create learning database(s) for her. Based on the learning record, it should be able to find the next level of course(s) for the student. With just the OLPC laptop, any remote student should be able to develop her literacy up to any level. Creating the courses for each level will be a part of this project. Information on this project will be updated on this page periodically.

WEB-TEACHER - SCOMST is making lot of effort to remotely connect to village/small town schools via internet and teach/guide the students in their career development. The idea is to use remote desktop sharing along with voice/video conferencing softwares to present the ideas and guide the students remotely. OLPC's schoool server along with the laptop's mesh networking will be very usefull for remote teaching. SCOMST will experiment various softwares with OLPC Laptop and find out the best possible solution for WEB-TEACHER program.

COMPLETE ONLINE EDUCATION SYSTEM

COES - This section describes about how the whole education system can be made complete online. More TDB.

Currently India is running at less than 5000 OLPC XOs. The single largest deployment of 1000 is in the state of Manipur in and around Imphal. There are schools in Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, Gujarat, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Tamilnadu that are using OLPC.

Currently India is running at less than 50 … Currently India is running at less than 5000 OLPC XOs. The single largest deployment of 1000 is in the state of Manipur in and around Imphal. There are schools in Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, Gujarat, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Tamilnadu that are using OLPC. ttarakhand, Tamilnadu that are using OLPC.